


Warmth in His Arms

by edlothia



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 15:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15888675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edlothia/pseuds/edlothia
Summary: When you wake in the night, gasping because you can feel your bones being crushed all over again, because you can hear Iovara thanking you for oblivion, Edér takes your hand.The world has broken you apart over and over, but somehow you're still here. A Priest of Eothas Watcher character study.





	Warmth in His Arms

**Author's Note:**

> This wonderful setting does not belong to me, nor do the passages of prayer quoted in this, but I am grateful to have them all in my heart nonetheless.

When the first quake comes you’re striding out of your room down the hall with frustration burning a hole in your chest.

 

If there’s one thing you hate more than anything, it’s petitioners. Not the ones who come with genuine needs. The ones who come with demands. Placations. The ones who just want to use you for who you are now, in this strange new life you’ve made in the forlorn land that killed your God.

 

Dust tumbles from the ceiling, the shelves displaying your weapons rattle, and it feels like somewhere beyond Hel he’s agreeing with you.

 

In a way, he is.

 

The second quake is larger; it sends you tumbling halfway down the stairs, the letter that made you so angry crumpling in your hand. Somewhere in the distance one of the guards shouts, and instinct takes over.

 

You start to run. You’re not fast enough.

 

\--

 

Edér’s face is the first thing you see when you wake up from death’s cold embrace, because of course it is.

 

It makes the knot in your chest thrum - or maybe that’s just the first hard, defiant beats of your heart. You don’t care which. They might even be the same. So you tear yourself out of the hard, unstable bed and into his arms.

 

“Rory,” he mumbles into your hair, when he’s done making his usual quips. “Scared me half to death, darlin’.”

 

It only hits you then: the truth. _Death_ , he says, and you don’t hear it in his voice at all, but the voice you always thought meant hope. The voice that you knew all along never existed, because it came from a dead God, and what safer thing to place your faith in.

 

The dead couldn’t disappoint you.

 

Instead, he killed you.

 

You open your lips - dry and chapped and raw - to say it. You can’t. Truth has always been your shield, your beacon, and now you can’t give it sound.

 

So instead you reach out your hand and summon sunlight so bright that it blinds the both of you and scares the Hel out of Eld Engrim as he stumbles into the captain’s cabin.

 

\--

 

Eventually you have to start telling the truth again, and when it comes it’s like a storm, and you can’t stop screaming at a world that has placed you in this ridiculous position.

 

Stuck fast between your God - your God, who crushed you to death beneath his literal foot - and a pantheon that you know to be built of the same lies as him. Thaos’s voice creeps back into your head with icy, iron fingers and doesn’t let go.

 

When you wake in the night, gasping because you can feel your bones being crushed all over again, because you can hear Iovara thanking you for oblivion, Edér takes your hand. He doesn’t say anything; he’s never had to. He’s put you back together before, it’s almost habit to now.

 

Besides. He’s screaming too.

 

But somehow it’s all still so fucking _normal_ , because you’re gathering people and helping them and listening to Xoti talk in her strange but endearing way and isn’t it just like being back with those missionaries who found you back home, in Old Vailia where your life was worse than terrible.

 

And then you hear the voice again. The voice that was in your head before Thaos’s, before you were a Watcher, before anyone else crept into your mind.

 

And it sounds the same.

 

\--

 

And when you think you’ve just started to get a grip on it, when the shock of learning that the God you thought you had imagined was with you all along has started to become one with the hum of the waves, you somehow find something worse.

 

A pale, long haired elf stepping out of a cage, face empty as if he has no idea that the sight of him is a fist straight to that knot in your chest.

 

Because he doesn’t. You never told him.

 

He was the first truth you couldn’t give up.

 

Except to Edér. Edér, who people see as so simple, but is the wisest person you’ve ever met. He knows, he understands, and Gods but if your heart doesn’t sing when he shifts ever-so-slightly between you and Aloth.

 

Aloth, who makes you lie for him within seconds of seeing him again. Aloth, who understood you before anyone else did, who met you when your world was shattering the first time and didn’t run away - then. Aloth, who never said goodbye when he did.

 

Come to think of it, isn’t your whole life just a series of shattering worlds?

 

\--

 

You forgive him, because it’s what Eothas would want you to do, and for all that is happening you somehow still _believe_ , and isn’t that a terrible thing?

 

The group of you stay in a tavern in Neketaka, too full of traders to have enough rooms for the lot of you. Xoti keeps you up for hours with her chattering - kind, enthusiastic, sometimes a wonderful distraction, but more than you can cope with today.

 

When she finally starts snoring, you creep out of the room in nothing but your tunic and pick the lock on the next room. Partway through fumbling the tumblers, you remember that Aloth was always so much better at this than you. But you remember some things from your misspent youth. Some of them.

 

And when the sun floods into the room the next morning, you remind yourself that you are only here because it’s the only way you can sleep. That’s all.

 

It isn’t for Aloth’s expression when he sits up in bed and sees you (tangled in Edér’s limbs, where it’s safe) and utters a small, but eloquent, “Oh.”

 

\--

 

You snap months later, when half the Deadfire’s problems are solved, and the memory of your God cradling you in his murderous arms is so fresh it sears.

 

There’s a storm. Nobody told you storms could last for days, but this one is like the raging fury in your soul, and you’re well into the second day when you feel like you’re about to snap - a cord finally, finally pulled too tight.

 

One of the deckhands places a jug of rice wine into your hands and packs you off to your cabin, where the shaking of the ship feels less and more all at once. You curl up on the end of the bed, look out of the window at the roiling water, and drink.

 

And drink.

 

Suddenly you’re warm and soft and there’s a truth bubbling on your lips, the same truth that you’ve heard from Xoti a thousand times but never actually took in.

 

“My God,” you say proudly to the next person that walks in the cabin, “is alive.”

 

You should stop there, at that shared truth, but you don’t. You keep going, because now the floodgates are open and you can’t hold back, not here at the edge of the world.

 

“He killed me. He killed me, and he’s killed hundreds of other people, and he’s going to change the world. He’s going to change the world, and I want to help him. I want to help him.”

 

You’re so overwhelmed by the truth that you don’t even register anything but the flurry of movement back through the door. Minutes later Edér appears, drenched from head to toe, one hand on his sword as if he expected to find you dying again.

 

“She looks fine to me,” he says over his shoulder.

 

You notice Aloth then, and in your hazy memory of half a minute ago, and you notice the things you’ve tried very hard not to. Because his armour - leather and tight and where did those arms come from? - is glossy from the storm and his hair is slicked back behind his pointed ears.

 

He tells Edér what you said - or Iselmyr does, at least, her Hylspeak somehow lending both more and less power to your decision to help Eothas.

 

One heartbeat passes, the silence full of rain and lashing waves. Two. Three.

 

Edér leans behind Aloth and pulls the door closed, storm latch and all.

 

They search the room as you watch, stumbling against the violence of the boat, and survey the wreckage of your breakdown. If it disappoints them to find it’s just an empty jug, they don’t say anything.

 

“I’ll leave you two to it,” Aloth says when the jug has been removed from the bed - as if it could do any more damage at this point.

 

But he doesn’t get more than a pace away; Edér’s hand lands on his shoulder.

 

“No.”

 

“I beg your pardon?”

 

“See, you left before. You left, and we didn’t rightly know what to do, what with the way of it all. So we broke a little. Put ourselves back together. Takes a while when you’re not expectin’ it.”

 

You hear all the things Edér isn’t saying. You hear him remembering the day Aloth left, when he found you collapsed on the floor of the elf’s empty and abandoned room, and the days afterwards where he did nothing but hold you because neither of you could do anything else.

 

You hear him remember the days where it was just the two of you and that was all that seemed to make sense, because children had been born without souls and the Gods were not real and the people you trust the most always betray you.

 

You can hear five years of malice in Edér’s voice now. Of fury. It doesn’t suit him.

 

It jars you out of the resonating presence of the truth of your heart - pushes you face first into another. You bring your hands to your lap and start muttering under your breath as the two men stare at one another.

 

“I don’t understa-”

 

“Yeah, you do. You do, Aloth, ‘cause you’re not as stupid as I look. So this time, you’re gonna stay right here and we’re gonna help each other like maybe we’re friends.”

 

“We _are_ friends. At least, I thought...”

 

Your spell completes. Light, blissful daylight, the light of the stars of redemption flutters through the cabin. Not blinding this time - soothing and warm and like someone has poured liquid hope from your crown all the way down to your toes.

 

It washes away the rice wine and leaves you with just the truth.

 

“No,” you say, pulling yourself out of the bed and walking to Edér’s side. “We’re not. Because you don’t let us in. Per complanca, Aloth, you never even said goodbye.”

 

The storm doesn’t cover the way your voice cracks. The shaking ship doesn’t make it look like the moment you grasp for Edér’s hand is just for stability, or hide that the fingers that reach for his are shaking.

 

“Goes both ways, friendship,” Edér says, his hand tightening around yours. “You might’ve learn that if you’d stuck around.”

 

Aloth lowers his head and exhales a sharp, reedy breath. “I had things to take care of,” he retorts defensively, then breathes deeply again. “You know I have trouble with - look, this isn’t even why we’re here.”

 

Isn’t it?

 

Edér looks down at you. “You mean it? You want to help him?”

 

You nod; the truth is heavy on your tongue but you know there are still floodgates, and what truth will you tell if you start to talk now?

 

“Seems to me,” Edér reasons, “the world’s messed up enough it might take something like this to start it right again.”

 

Aloth’s eyes widen. “You can’t be serious.”

 

“Do you know,” you say, cutting off Edér’s argument - he’s still furious and you can feel it shaking through him - “what I did before I came to the Dyrwood?”

 

They shake their heads. Because you never told them. And if you start talking, you might never stop, and what then?

 

_Nothing is hidden from his glory. Nothing is hidden from his sight._

 

So you tell them. You tug Edér to the edge of the bed and sit, and open the floodgates that you have never opened in the years and years and years that the three of you - because it was always the three of you, really - have known one another.

 

You tell them about the uprisings and the rebellions. About the time you set fire to the private residences of the Songretta Ducala. About fighting and murdering and stealing and all of the many, many lies that you told for years.

 

You tell them about the day that you failed. That everyone died - except you. You, who for some reason couldn’t quite manage to die.

 

And you tell them about the voice that crept into your soul and never left.

 

“Thaos?” Aloth asks. You don’t know when he moved to sit next to you. You shake your head.

 

“ _And the sun_ ,” you whisper, “ _shall break through the darkness_.”

 

Edér sighs and shifts. His arms wrap around your waist, and his chin drops onto your shoulder as he says, “ _The new dawn arriving with the rebirth of the day_.”

 

“You want to stage the ultimate rebellion,” Aloth says, drawing your eyes back to him. “You want to overthrow the Gods. The world as we know it.”

 

“Yes.” Nodding isn’t enough. You have to say it out loud. Truth is a waterfall and you are riding the currents like the _Defiant_ is riding this storm. “I want you to come with me. Both of you. I need you to.”

 

Aloth’s lips part in surprise, but Edér just chuckles, the sound trickling low into your belly where his arms are crossed. Because he gets it. He gets it like no one else really does.

 

Except Aloth.

 

Who shifts, slides his elegant fingers across the disheveled blankets and over your own, and says, “Ado vidòrio.”

 

His accent is terrible, so you laugh as you kiss him, Edér’s arms still wrapped around you, a final truth upon your lips. You have always been most terrified of being alone. It just took you a long time to realise that _alone_ meant _without them_.

 

And it isn’t that simple, of course. It’s never that simple. But this time Aloth says goodbye when he goes, and when the storm has broken and the crew are back in the Wild Mare celebrating their survival, he sits on your other side and holds your hand under the table.

 

It’s not that simple.

 

Your God is alive and he killed you and he loves you and he wants you to let him break the world.

 

And somehow, despite all that, _because_ of that, things make more sense now than they ever have before.

 

It’s enough.

  



End file.
